LAST weekend’s highlight was the €56,000 Group 3 Prix de Barbeville over one mile and seven furlongs at Deauville.
Although only five runners went to post, it was great to see two tip-top stayers back in action in the shape of Call The Wind and Holdthasigreen and the two old stagers served up a thrilling finish, Call The Wind taking advantage of his 7lb weight differential to come out on top by a short neck.
As feared, the small field meant a tactical and slowly run affair in which Tony Piccone took Holdthasigreen to an early lead, but the pace did not increase much above a canter until the final five furlongs.
Older statesmen
Olivier Peslier, at 47 one of the older statesmen of the weighing room, had seen it all before and slotted Call The Wind into second place. So when Piccone finally pressed the accelerator hard down riding the home bend, Peslier was already hard at work ensuring he never conceded a clear lead to his main rival.
Holdthasigreen continued to travel the better of the pair approaching the furlong pole, but Call The Wind eventually hit top gear to overhaul his old rival and make the score between the pair five-one in favour of the Frankel gelding, his solitary reverse coming when they filled the top two places in October’s Group 1 Prix du Cadran.
A seventh meeting may take place in the Group 2 Prix Vicomtesse Vigier on June 14th, when Holdthasigreen will have a 3lb pull.
Trainer Freddy Head is also considering the Gold Cup at Ascot, four days later, for the winner.
“I’ve always had my reservations about Ascot for Call The Wind but I will talk to his owner-breeder (George Strawbridge) and we’ll see,” he said.
The result came as something of a relief to Head, who had endured a fortnight-long, 17-runner winner-drought since racing had restarted.
IT’S not often that a small-field race ends with a tight battle between three horses, one glued to the inside rail, one hard up against the outside fence and a third equidistant between the pair in the centre of the course.
But that’s exactly what happened in the week’s only other pattern contest, the seven-furlong €56,000 Group 3 Prix du Palais-Royal at Clairefontaine on Thursday.
Spinning Memories, marooned in no man’s land in the middle of the track, managed to stick her neck out for a one-length victory ahead of the trail-blazing front-runner, Azano, with Stunning Spirit, who had looked all over the winner with 100 yards to run, a short-head back in third.
Wrong place
Winning pilot Christophe Soumillion admitted that he was in the wrong place but that his mount’s class got him out of trouble.
Spinning Memories is now a winner of two group races as well as three listed and her victory continued a good spell for 67-year-old trainer Pascal Bary.
Coming on the back of another Group 3 score with Pretreville, he has now had as many individual pattern winners in the last 10 days as he had in the entirety of either of the previous two seasons.
Future plans for this five-year-old Arcano mare are unusual to say the least – she will be going under the hammer in an online auction conducted by the Australian-based Magic Millions sales company at the beginning of next month.
Azano’s performance was yet another feather in the cap of his new handler, Francis Graffard.
A Group 3 winner at Chantilly last season for John Gosden, he is apparently a very tricky customer, hence his recent gelding operation.
Chantilly and Compiegne in green zone
ON Thursday horse racing got a rare namecheck from the French Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, at a press conference announcing the latest developments in the nation’s battle with Covid-19.
Philippe was happy to reveal that the situation in the north east of the country had improved sufficiently to allow most of its regions to become classified as ‘green zones’, thus qualifying for a relaxation in their lockdown restrictions.
The racecourses at both Chantilly and, over jumps, Compiegne can therefore be reopened meaning that Chantilly should, after all, be able to stage the third and fourth classics of the season, the Prix du Jockey-Club and the Prix de Diane, on July 5th.
Auteuil
However, the Ile de France region, which includes ParisLongchamp, Saint-Cloud and Auteuil, remains an ‘orange zone’, meaning that racing at these three venues is still prohibited.
Compiegne will be able to take over the big June 7th Auteuil fixture although France Galop has had a rethink on its earlier plans for Auteuil’s two biggest events scheduled for that meeting, the Grand Steeple-Chase de Paris and the Grande Course de Haies d’Auteuil.
They will not now be moved to Compiegne and instead be run at Auteuil in the autumn.
No date has yet been mooted for the Grande Course but the Grand Steep’ is set to be run on November 8th, with the regular autumn Grade 1 chase, the Prix La Haye Jousselin, moved forward to October 11th and reduced in distance to two miles, six furlongs.